.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Françoise Gilot entered Pablo Picasso’s life in May 1943. The two met at Le Catalan, a restaurant in Paris’ Left Bank, where Gilot was dining with the actor Alain Cuny and another friend. Picasso was with Dora Maar, the artist and his then-paramour. As Gilot wrote in her autobiography, Life with Picasso, “As the meal went on I noticed Picasso watching us, and from time to time acting a bit for our benefit… Whenever he said something particularly amusing, he smiled at us rather than just at his dinner companions. Finally, he got up and came over to our table. He brought with him a bowl of cherries and offered some to all of us, in his strong Spanish accent, calling them cerisses…” (Life with Picasso, New York, 1964, p. 14). Over the following weeks, the pair began to spend more and more together, but it was not until the following year that they became a couple.
For the first two years, they had an on-again, off-again relationship, with Picasso frequently trying to convince Gilot to move in with him. An accomplished artist in her own right, she worried that moving would compromise her freedom; it wasn’t until the spring of 1946 that the two reached an understanding of sorts. “Yes, all of a sudden,” Gilot recalled, “at the end of April or the beginning of May, Pablo decided that he couldn’t live without me,” (J. Richardson and F. Gilot, “A Decade of Life with Picasso” in Picasso and Françoise Gilot: Paris-Vallauris, 1943-1953, exh. cat., Gagosian Gallery, New York, 2012, p. 17). Before long, she was living with Picasso in his studio on the Rue des Grands Augustins. Shortly thereafter, he painted Gilot in Femme dans un fauteuil, an ode to her presence in his life.
Femme dans un fauteuil was painted on 5 May 1946, the same day the artist created La Femme-fleur (Zervos, vol. 14, no. 167; Private collection), also a portrait of Gilot as a flowering plant. Initially, Picasso intended to depict Gilot fairly realistically, but then he remembered that Henri Matisse—whom the two had visited early that year while vacationing in Golfe-Juan in the South of France—had talked about painting her with green hair. Ever competitive, in La Femme-fleur, Picasso transformed Gilot into an elegant, lithe flower, with her head and neck forming the bloom. “You’re like a growing plant,” Picasso remarked. “I’ve been wondering how I could get across the idea that you belong to the vegetable kingdom rather than the animal. I’ve never felt impelled to portray anyone else this way. It’s strange, isn’t it? I think it’s just right, though. It represents you” (quoted in op. cit., 1964, p. 119).
In the present work, Picasso has further exaggerated Gilot’s hair as two enormous leaves. Her visage—which the artist referred to as a “little blue moon”—is almost overwhelmed by the greenery, as a yellow beam illuminates her enthroned body (quoted in ibid., p. 117). The vast majority of Picasso's depictions of woman show them seated with the figure and chair often merging into one form. The chairs alternate between being luxuriant and pliant and, at other times, sharp-edged contraptions that forever constrain their sitter.
Within the present work, the colors are crystalline; Matisse had joked that Picasso would “make [Gilot’s] body blue to go with red-tile floor,” which is indeed what he did (quoted in ibid., p. 100). The vibrant tonalities imbue the portrait with a sense of vitality. The present work was painted almost precisely one year after the end of the Second World War in Europe. The couple, who had met during the darkest days of the Occupation, were now able to live together in a liberated Paris. Life was reemerging in the French capital and for Picasso, Gilot’s embodiment of spring—and thus of peacetime—suggested new beginnings and a hopeful view of the future.
For the first two years, they had an on-again, off-again relationship, with Picasso frequently trying to convince Gilot to move in with him. An accomplished artist in her own right, she worried that moving would compromise her freedom; it wasn’t until the spring of 1946 that the two reached an understanding of sorts. “Yes, all of a sudden,” Gilot recalled, “at the end of April or the beginning of May, Pablo decided that he couldn’t live without me,” (J. Richardson and F. Gilot, “A Decade of Life with Picasso” in Picasso and Françoise Gilot: Paris-Vallauris, 1943-1953, exh. cat., Gagosian Gallery, New York, 2012, p. 17). Before long, she was living with Picasso in his studio on the Rue des Grands Augustins. Shortly thereafter, he painted Gilot in Femme dans un fauteuil, an ode to her presence in his life.
Femme dans un fauteuil was painted on 5 May 1946, the same day the artist created La Femme-fleur (Zervos, vol. 14, no. 167; Private collection), also a portrait of Gilot as a flowering plant. Initially, Picasso intended to depict Gilot fairly realistically, but then he remembered that Henri Matisse—whom the two had visited early that year while vacationing in Golfe-Juan in the South of France—had talked about painting her with green hair. Ever competitive, in La Femme-fleur, Picasso transformed Gilot into an elegant, lithe flower, with her head and neck forming the bloom. “You’re like a growing plant,” Picasso remarked. “I’ve been wondering how I could get across the idea that you belong to the vegetable kingdom rather than the animal. I’ve never felt impelled to portray anyone else this way. It’s strange, isn’t it? I think it’s just right, though. It represents you” (quoted in op. cit., 1964, p. 119).
In the present work, Picasso has further exaggerated Gilot’s hair as two enormous leaves. Her visage—which the artist referred to as a “little blue moon”—is almost overwhelmed by the greenery, as a yellow beam illuminates her enthroned body (quoted in ibid., p. 117). The vast majority of Picasso's depictions of woman show them seated with the figure and chair often merging into one form. The chairs alternate between being luxuriant and pliant and, at other times, sharp-edged contraptions that forever constrain their sitter.
Within the present work, the colors are crystalline; Matisse had joked that Picasso would “make [Gilot’s] body blue to go with red-tile floor,” which is indeed what he did (quoted in ibid., p. 100). The vibrant tonalities imbue the portrait with a sense of vitality. The present work was painted almost precisely one year after the end of the Second World War in Europe. The couple, who had met during the darkest days of the Occupation, were now able to live together in a liberated Paris. Life was reemerging in the French capital and for Picasso, Gilot’s embodiment of spring—and thus of peacetime—suggested new beginnings and a hopeful view of the future.